John Sutter

John Augustus Sutter (23 February 1803-18 June 1880) was a Swiss-American pioneer who founded the city of Sacramento, California and whose discovery of gold on his property in 1848 led to the Gold Rush.

Biography
Johann August Sutter was born in Kandern, Bavaria, Holy Roman Empire in 1803, and he was educated in Switzerland. In May 1834, having accumulated debt, he abandoned his wife and five children and emigrated to New York City, hoping to avoid time in a debtors' prison. He changed his name to "John Augustus Sutter", and he learned Spanish and English. Along with 35 other German settlers, he traveled from St. Louis, Missouri to Santa Fe, New Mexico (then a part of Mexico); Kansas City, Missouri; Fort Vancouver, Oregon Territory; Honolulu, Hawaii; New Archangel, Russian America; and San Francisco, California, working various jobs. He arrived in San Francisco, Alta California on 1 July 1839 and became a Mexican citizen a year later. Sutter decided to found a settlement in the Central Valley which he named New Helvetia after his homeland, and it was completed in 1841; it later came to be known as "Sutter's Fort" and later became the site of Sacramento, the California state capital. In 1846, he supported an independent California Republic, but he decided against resisting John C. Fremont and the US Army when they took over his fort. He kept up to 800 Native Americans in a state of slavery, raping girls as young as 12. In 1848, his employee James W. Marshall found gold on his property, starting the Gold Rush as immigrants poured in with the fantasy of becoming rich from gold prospecting. Sutter's attempt to keep the discovery of gold a secret failed, as did his business; he was forced to sell New Helvetia to pay off his debts and moved to Hock Farm along the Feather River. He died in Washington DC in 1880 at the age of 77.